BackSnapdeal’s Amit Maheshwari to become Exclusively.com CEO
Snapdeal is yet to name a successor to Maheshwari, who was serving as senior vice-president of fashion business
Premium
Snapdeal.com, owned by Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd, on Tuesday said Amit Maheshwari is stepping down as head of the company’s fashion category to lead its newly acquired luxury fashion portal Exclusively.com as chief executive.
Snapdeal acquired Exclusively.com in February in what is believed to be an all-stock deal. The company did not disclose details of the transaction.
Snapdeal is yet to name a successor to Maheshwari, who was serving as senior vice-president of fashion business, one of the fastest growing categories for the company.
According to Snapdeal, the fashion category is expected to make $2 billion in the current financial year. Exclusively.com is expected to contribute $100 million in revenue in the current fiscal year, Mint reported in April.
“The move to Exclusively is a continuation of my journey that began three years ago at Snapdeal. We are focused on building a highly-scalable premium fashion business at Exclusively," said Maheshwari.
As more Indians are becoming comfortable buying online, Snapdeal is making an aggressive bid to expand its reach and garner a larger share of the nation’s growing online retail market, which is expected to be worth $6 billion this year, a 70% increase over 2014 sales of $3.5 billion, according to technology researcher Gartner Inc. According to Snapdeal, luxury products and services are a $14-billion market in India, growing at an annual pace of 30%.
“Amit has been a core member of Snapdeal leadership team and the driving force behind the exceptional successes of our fashion business. As we create India’s most impactful digital commerce ecosystem, it is important to stay agile and move ahead with assured pace. In this new entrepreneurial role, Amit will be at the helm of Exclusively’s growth and we are certain that, with his expertise and intricate knowledge of fashion business, Exclusively will very soon be India’s largest premium fashion destination," said Kunal Bahl, chief executive and co-founder, Snapdeal.
Snapdeal has been on a massive management reshuffle since the start of the year as it gears up to aggressively compete with rivals Flipkart and Amazon. It recently named Anand Chandrasekaran as its chief product officer and also hired former Coca-Cola India marketing director Idi Srinivas as marketing head.
Founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Snapdeal raised more than $1 billion last year from investors, including Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. The company claims to offer more than 12 million products across 500-plus categories with more than 40 million registered users and 150,000 merchants. The company aims to expand its merchant base to one million in the next three years.
Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world 🌏 Click here to know more.
